Star Trek Voy - Season 6 - Episode 16
Star Trek Voy - 6x16 - Collective
Originally Aired: 2000-2-16
Synopsis:
Voyager encounters Borg children. [DVD]
Problems
- Why didn't the Borg destroy the cube instead of just arbitrarily declaring it irrelevant? If the Borg children hadn't accidentally blown it up, it would have just sat there for any alien species to salvage. Which brings me to my next point. Why didn't Voyager steal transwarp coils? You could argue that they didn't have the time; that all their resources were directed at saving the away team, but given the heist they made in Voy: Dark Frontier, you'd expect they could pull off another one with a quickness.
Factoids
None
Remarkable Scenes
- The teaser. Holy crap! Just like TNG: The Mind's Eye ;)
- The Delta Flyer fighting the Borg cube.
- Voyager's encounter with the Borg cube.
- Seven of Nine encountering the "neonatal" drones.
- Harry, within the Delta flyer, within the Borg cube.
My Review
Mixed feelings about this one. On one hand it's got great special effects, a compelling story (mostly), and very real consequences. On the other hand the episode utterly fails to live up to its premise. The story it decides to tell isn't half bad, but the story they could have told with it could have been much better. And the flaws along the way ruin some of its greatness. Specifically, the idea of rescuing Borg children from the maturation chambers is a good one, but the idea of a Borg ship with all the drones excepting the children dead was a bad one. It's also inconsistent with Borg behavior. It's been said that the Borg usually return to salvage their technology. At the very least, they should have destroyed the cube. In a better version of this episode, Voyager could have encountered a damaged Borg ship and gone hunting for transwarp coils again (why didn't they do that by the way?) and they could have accidentally destroyed the power source to the maturation chambers. So now Voyager is faced with rescuing the dying children or completing their heist. They choose to save the children. Same outcome, better story. With a full compliment of Borg aboard, a much more exciting one too. In short, this was a fair episode, great consequences, decent ride, below average plot. Could have been improved upon easily.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
I agree that the story could have been better, but I still think it was an above average plot. Certainly better than Tsunkatse, which got a 7. But I do agree that a lot of it was unrealistic as far as the Borg just leaving the cube floating in space for anyone to salvage. I wouldn't put it past them though, with their ridiculous arrogance.
This episode is absolutely vile. The last thing I want to see is bad child actors parading around as Borg. I understand the circumstances of the plot, but even considering them... it's just a major disappointment and it's done all wrong. Voyager's writers seemed intent on trivializing the Borg to the level of just another ST villain. Yeah, it's cool to see them out of their element once in a while, but not like this. The leader kid's acting is especially bad.
Yes, a flawed episode that could have been a great one. The flaws are disruptive to the general Trek narrative, undermining hitherto established basics -- eg, that the Borg return for their technology, or destroy it, when a vessel is disabled. Adding to the list of problems ... what happens to the Borg baby? The writers took care to establish the children as recurring characters, yet the baby is never, ever mentioned again in any episode.
The Star Trek take on Lord of flies
Even though this isn't one of the very best of Voyager, it still stand out as one of the better episodes of the series.
One detail I especially like is that the deck of cards which take all attention for the 4 in the shuttle so that they are caught in the first place.
Also foils the plan to blow up the cube shield generator when the Borg girl use the cards to follow and find ensign Kim.
Thumbs up and a must see!
You know that Collective voice you hear whenever you communicate with a Borg cube? "We are the Borg, you will be assimilated, your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own, resistance is futile, et cetera et cetera..." I always assumed that was thousands of drones on the cube speaking as one. I guess not. I guess it's just... like, a vocal filter anyone on the Cube can use.
And why the heck do the Borg keep biographical data on the individual drones? Seems like an incredibly inefficient use of computer memory, especially if all of the drones had access to those files.